Take It Off

by J. Minter

I was wrong. Her mouth was frozen in a small, diminutive O shape and her face had gone white. We looked at each other for a long, frightened moment.

  “Wait, pimping a girl out, that wouldn’t really occur to you, would it?”

  I shook my head, ’cause no, it really wouldn’t.

  Mickey’s a survivor

  As soon as Mickey saw the fish, he knew it was his. The water had gone tranquil and turquoise in the afternoon, and from the surface you could see nearly to the bottom. Mickey was on one of the rocky outcroppings that had ejected them from their boat earlier in the day. He stepped to the edge, let out a war whoop, and dove headfirst through the water and toward the fish. Of course, once he was a good ways under water he realized that the fish was not only much larger than it had originally appeared, but that it was a shark. A very small shark—only a foot and a half or so—but it still had frightening teeth inside its little mouth.

  Well, Mickey thought, now’s as good a time to go as any, and he threw his arms around the shark and began kicking his way back up to the surface. The shark squirmed mightily in his arms, but once Mickey had gotten some air in his lungs, he put an end to the wrestling match by hitting the shark on the nose with his forehead. This was what his third-grade teacher had told him to do if he ever came face-to-face with a shark, and, absurdly, it worked. Mickey grabbed the stunned creature by its tail and swung it so that its head struck the rock with a fatal thwap! Then he tossed the lifeless fish into the dinghy and rowed back to shore.

  He found the camping spot they had chosen earlier. It was on a high, dry space above the beach, with a good view of their ship. The sun was going down, and all along the rocky face of the island little fires were being lit with dry matches by other Ocean Term students. Greta had collected a bunch of palm fronds and sticks, and had managed to make a sort of tent out of them. She was kneeling on the ground and bending over to make sure the sticks she used for poles were secure. There was dirt on her tank top and cutoff jeans and she looked very wild and capable and like she would be down for pretty much anything. She looked primitive, in fact. Looking at her made Mickey feel all randy.

  Meanwhile, Arno had collected rocks in a fireplace formation and had formed a burnable pyramid of twigs and kindling. He was blowing on their matches, which had of course been ruined when they all fell out of the boat earlier. He looked really out of his element, and Mickey imagined how much fun it would be to stomp on his head. Then he could carry Greta up to the highest point on the island and they could offer themselves to the gods, or something else very Aztec.

  “Guess what’s for dinner,” Mickey called. Arno looked up at him with a seriously pissed expression. When Mickey threw the shark down in front of him, Arno stared at it, and then turned his face up to Mickey bitterly.

  “How exactly are we going to cook that, genius?”

  “Dude, I don’t know but I don’t think blowing on the matches is going to dry them out.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  “Actually, yeah.”

  “Oh, my God, how did you catch that thing?” Greta came over to them, dusting off her hands. Her hair was a mess, and her face was a little sunburned. But her skin had faded over the night so that she mostly looked like she had a decent tan.

  “Well, I …”

  “The real question, and what I said in the first place, is how are we going to cook it.”

  Mickey snorted, then went over to the fire pit. He took a flattened stick and another round stick and rubbed it up and down with a little bit of dried grass until a tiny flame emerged. He pressed the flaming grass carefully into the pyramid, and slowly but surely the whole thing caught on. Mickey fanned it with his wife-beater, which he’d torn off hours ago to let it dry in the sun.

  Mickey smiled at Greta like a kid who’d just busted open the piñata. “A little trick my granddad learned during the Cuban Revolution, when he and Che were hiding from Batista’s army in the Sierra Maestra.”

  “That is such a lie.” Arno sneered.

  “Maybe, but it’s fun, which is more than I can say for you, you stuck-up little bitch. Now shut up and cook this thing.”

  So they set about hacking up the fish with the knife from their survival kit. While they were waiting for the fish to cook, Greta excused herself to pee. Mickey and Arno watched her disappear into the bushes, and then Arno hissed, “Look, out of respect for you I decided to stop going after Suki. Why are you always chasing the girl I’m after?”

  “What? You only stopped going after her once she disappeared! Are you insane?”

  “I might ask you that question.”

  They both stood instinctively and stared at each other. Mickey could feel the fury building inside of him, and even though he’d never been in a fistfight—at least, not with one of the guys in his crew—he felt like he might be about to be in one now.

  A bright light shone on them just then, like they were in an episode of Cops or something, and then they heard Stephanie calling “Good work, sailors!” into her bullhorn. A few moments later, she appeared in their campground. She was wearing a very warm-looking jacket and leggings, and the guy who had been driving the boat earlier came along behind her holding a ridiculously powerful flashlight.

  “This is quite a setup!” Stephanie exclaimed, going over to Greta’s palm tent and examining it. Mickey and Arno sat down on the log by the fire. She took little notes on a clipboard she carried. She looked over the fire, and the remains of the shark, and made little exaggerated mmmm-hmmmm noises.

  Greta came back from the bushes and sat between Mickey and Arno as Stephanie finished her report. She strained her neck to see over the other faculty guy, and if there were anybody else in the group. When Stephanie was done, she looked at them cheerily.

  “I can’t tell you how many points you got, but I can tell you your score is very impressive. All right, sailors, good luck getting through the night!”

  When she was gone, Mickey leaned across Greta and shoved Arno off the log.

  I love a classy hotel

  There was only one thing that was going to make me feel better about the loss of my watch and my general, utter stupidity. That thing was luxury. I took Suki to the Hotel Miramar and I got us a room. The same officious little twit was behind the counter, and he opened his mouth in protest when he saw me coming through the door. I silenced him with something better than a perfect Spanish accent. I put three hundred euro notes on the counter in front of him.

  “Habitación para dos,” I said. My accent was awful. It felt great.

  The concierge smiled a little smile to himself, and then said something in his very fast Spanish.

  “Cómo?” I asked him.

  “The habitaciones baratas are all full, señor.”

  He was obviously relishing this, but I was ready for him. “What do you have available?”

  The concierge flipped through his reservation book. “It seems we have the Miro Suite available. Although, I suppose it will be a little caro for you.”

  “We’ll take it,” I said.

  “Five hundred euros, please.”

  I laid down the bills like they were nothing to me.

  Suki, at my shoulder, was strangely quiet and supportive through all of this, probably because she still felt bad about my watch. Which would, you know, make sense.

  When I had filled out the guest card, and the concierge had stopped glaring at me, the bellboy appeared. He took us up the rickety, old-fashioned elevator to the fourth floor, unlocked our suite, and let us into just about the most perfect place in the whole world.

  There is nothing I love like a good hotel. Your towels and sheets are changed daily, and of course, they allow you to, for a short while, be completely untethered from your life and your personality and whatever awful stuff has been going on with you. Now, you may think, hotel rooms are where thousands of different unkempt people do gross things to themselves and others, so what’s clean about that? And that’s exactly the sort of thing I think constan
tly when I’m in a hotel like, say, La Cucaracha. When I’m in a good hotel, that never enters my mind. So you can imagine how freaking psyched I was to be out of the one and into the other.

  When the bellboy was gone, Suki did what pretty much all girls do when they go into a fancy hotel room. She kicked off her shoes and started jumping on the bed, which was very large and soft-looking and covered in a tasteful cream brocade coverlet. The room was expansive, and it had a chandelier and soft carpeting and big French doors that led out onto a terrace. I checked in the bathroom. There were a lot of mirrors and gold detail, and the tub was gigantic and heart-shaped. There were a lot of expensive-looking products, too: soaps and lotions and hair stuff. And there were two impossibly soft white robes, wrapped in plastic, hanging from the door.

  “First bath!” I called. I took my time making myself feel human again, and used one of the pomades to get my hair back into the shape it had been in yesterday morning. The very thought of putting my sweaty clothes back on bummed me out, especially when I noticed that my white cords and T-shirt had taken on a gray tinge. So I put on one of the robes and decided I might never take it off. When I came back into the room, Suki was lying on her back looking very relaxed and staring at the ceiling. Without looking up at me, she said, “What have you been doing, I’m starving …”

  “I know, when did we last eat?”

  “I can’t remember. I’m gonna take a bath, and then let’s order lots of food.”

  So Suki took a bath, and I went out and took in the view from our terrace, which was pretty fantastic. We faced west, and all along the bay I could see the glittering lights of nightclubs and restaurants and promenades, and all the lovely people enjoying long, lazy nights. Or wild, adrenaline-filled nights, as the case may be. Out beyond the bay, I could see a little corner of open ocean and I imagined that that’s where we were headed tomorrow, in a straight line across the water to Barcelona. The situation definitely called for something expensive and drinkable, so I opened the minibar and uncorked a bottle of champagne. I poured us each a glass, and when Suki came out in her white robe we drank it together in silence and enjoyed the cool ocean breeze and the uncompromised comfort of it all.

  Then we did what anybody in our situation would do: We ordered American-style omelets with potatoes and toast and a side of pancakes from room service, and we ate breakfast for dinner on the bed in our bathrobes while watching cheesy Spanish television, and periodically making very dramatic accusations and ultimatums (like, “I know you have been making love to the one-legged priest,” and, “If you don’t murder your lover I will be forced to have an illegitimate child with your father”) at each other in gibberish Spanish. As Suki delivered her over-the-top lines, she pulled at the collar of her bathrobe as though she were about to rip it off, and I couldn’t help but notice the smooth, pale skin between her perfect little breasts. I wasn’t leering or anything, but she was definitely hot, and I began to get why Mickey and Arno were so excited about her.

  At some point, there was no more champagne, so we ordered more from room service, and then we danced on the bed and sang “November Rain” at the top of our lungs (she did the words, and I did the guitar solos) and when our champagne flutes were empty we threw them down on the ground and watched them shatter. We thought this was hilarious.

  Eventually we collapsed on the very large, very soft bed, and fell asleep.

  I wish I could tell you that the rest of our adventure was more of the same and end it here, but that would be a lie.

  Arno versus Nature

  “What the fuck was that?” Arno had been sleeping fitfully for a few hours, but when he heard the yowl outside the tent, he was definitely awake. Greta and Mickey sat up, and they all peeped outside. Prowling the campsite were four or five mangy-looking dogs.

  “Coyotes,” Mickey said.

  “No, just wild dogs,” Arno said. He scooted out from the palm tent and grabbed one of the sticks they had been using to tend the fire. He thrust it into the remaining embers, so that the end caught into flame. He waved it back and forth at the dogs, who howled at him but didn’t come any closer.

  Arno grabbed one of the many pieces of leftover fish and threw it far into the night.

  “Now git!” he shouted, sounding more cowboylike than he had meant to. Or than he thought was capable of. The dogs scattered after the fish. Arno took a seat by the fire, feeling revved. He stayed there, long after Mickey and Greta had gone back to sleep. He thought about them in the tent by themselves, and how Mickey might be making a move. He thought about loneliness, and lots of other weighty topics that usually never occurred to him, or, frankly, ever touched on his everyday life. After a while, when he was very tired and convinced that the dogs weren’t coming back, he crawled back into the tent and shut his eyes.

  He felt beat and capable and much better about himself. As his mind faded into dream, he felt Greta turn in her sleep and curl up against him. That’s right, he thought, in their subconscious minds all girls, even the ones with boyfriends, dream of me.

  “All right, sailors, race begins in half an hour!”

  The little group camped high above the rocky cove stirred but didn’t fully wake for several minutes. Mickey snored lightly, and Greta was still wrapped up in Arno’s arms. When Stephanie made her second bullhorn announcement, they all lurched up and quickly assumed some new position. Stepping out of the makeshift tent, they saw that it was still early dawn, the sky rosy and the air crisp and new.

  The Ariadne was far closer to the island than when the survival test had begun. They could see Stephanie’s motorboat circling the island and waking up all the other teams. The staff had collected all the dinghies during the night, and they had to wake up quickly for the race back to shore. Arno felt like something had happened during the night, like he was more focused and competitive and inside his own body now. He also thought that Greta looked entirely adorable, stretching to wake herself up and combing her hair with her fingers.

  He watched Mickey moving foggily around the camp. It didn’t really seem like competition to Arno.

  They stamped out the embers in the fire, collected their survival kit, and headed down to the shore. When Stephanie shouted through the bullhorn, “On your marks. Get set. Go!” They all waded into the water, gasping at the cold and cursing themselves for having signed up for the test.

  Perhaps because it was still so early in the day, they concentrated on their swimming and didn’t think about the depth of the water, or how tired they were. They swam harder for several lengths, and when the three of them reached the Ariadne, in unison, just as the rules instructed, they popped out and saw that they were the first team to arrive. The crew threw down ladders from the top deck and they climbed back up to comfort and safety. When they reached the deck, they saw Barker and his guests, and Patch, who looked deeply bored, behind them.

  “Team fifteen!” Barker boomed. “An excellent morning swim! You come in first place for the final segment of the test. Now go get yourselves cleaned up. We have breakfast on the deck in forty-five minutes, and as soon as we get all the teams on board we set sail for Barcelona.”

  They slapped hands with Patch, and Greta gave him a kiss on the check, and then team fifteen headed to their individual cabins to clean off the cold memory of Barker Island.

  When they reached Greta’s cabin, Arno put his hand on her waist and said, “You were great today. And you should know that you look gorgeous all wet and flushed like that.”

  “Uh, thanks,” Greta said. Arno winked and started walking down the hall.

  Mickey looked after him furiously. He quickly kissed Greta on the cheek and then followed Arno down the hall.

  “What the fuck was that?” he shouted after Arno. He didn’t turn around, and when Mickey caught up to him he shoved Arno’s shoulder. “I said, what the fuck was that?”

  Arno did the eyebrow thing at him, which always made Mickey crazy. He ran at the wall behind him, bounced off it, and launched himself in
to Arno, who artfully dodged him. Mickey smacked into the opposite wall.

  Arno continued to walk toward his room, but Mickey came after him growling. “Hey man! What’s wrong with you? Why are you always after the girl I like?” he shouted.

  “Maybe I like her,” Arno said, shrugging. He pointed at the door of cabin 164. “That’s me. Thanks for keeping up with me in the race today—I was pleasantly surprised, actually.” He stepped inside, then waved at Mickey, who looked like he was about to detonate. “Oh, and Mickey? Try and behave yourself.”

  I am reminded of some of Suki’s less attractive qualities

  “See? This is totally what I was talking about,” Suki said.

  I looked down at the silver tray of croissant, café con leche, melon, and orange juice, and felt a familiar irritation spreading from the back of my neck. We hadn’t really been talking about anything, and I was still wearing what I was then thinking of as the best bathrobe in the world.

  “What? What were you talking about?”

  Suki giggled, ripped off a piece of croissant, and threw herself back into the pillows, where she nibbled at the croissant slowly and thoughtfully. Her black hair fanned out around her head.

  “Well, it’s like when we went on road trips when I was a kid … We’d go up to Napa, and drive all those crazy backroads. That was before they got them all fixed for the East Coast wine tourists. Well, my dad and my little brother were always the ones who had to ‘stop for a breath’ and throw up, and my mom and I were always fine and just impatient to get where we were going …”

  Would you have known what she was talking about? I sure didn’t.

  “Or it’s like that time in anatomy class when we had to dissect cats … My partner was a guy and he couldn’t handle the smell at all—they keep them in formaldehyde, you know—and he had to go outside while I …”

  “Okay, I get it. Women are stronger than dudes. So then who got us into this hotel?”